US scientists have called on mainstream religious communities to help them fight policies that undermine the teaching of evolution.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) hit out at the "intelligent design" movement at its annual meeting in Missouri.

Teaching the idea threatens scientific literacy among schoolchildren, it said.

Its proponents argue life on Earth is too complex to have evolved on its own.

As the name suggests, intelligent design is a concept invoking the hand of a designer in nature.

It's time to recognise that science and religion should never be pitted against each other Gilbert Omenn AAAS president

There have been several attempts across the US by anti-evolutionists to get intelligent design taught in school science lessons.

At the meeting in St Louis, the AAAS issued a statement strongly condemning the moves.

"Such veiled attempts to wedge religion - actually just one kind of religion - into science classrooms is a disservice to students, parents, teachers and tax payers," said AAAS president Gilbert Omenn.

"It's time to recognise that science and religion should never be pitted against each other.

"They can and do co-exist in the context of most people's lives. Just not in science classrooms, lest we confuse our children."

'Who's kidding whom?'

Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education, which campaigns to keep evolution in public schools, said those in mainstream religious communities needed to "step up to the plate" in order to prevent the issue being viewed as a battle between science and religion.

Some have already heeded the warning.

"The intelligent design movement belittles evolution. It makes God a designer - an engineer," said George Coyne, director of the Vatican Observatory.

"Intelligent design concentrates on a designer who they do not really identify - but who's kidding whom?"

Last year, a federal judge ruled in favour of 11 parents in Dover, Pennsylvania, who argued that Darwinian evolution must be taught as fact.

Dover school administrators had pushed for intelligent design to be inserted into science teaching. But the judge ruled this violated the constitution, which sets out a clear separation between religion and state.

Despite the ruling, more challenges are on the way.

Fourteen US states are considering bills that scientists say would restrict the teaching of evolution.

These include a legislative bill in Missouri which seeks to ensure that only science which can be proven by experiment is taught in schools.

I think if we look at where the empirical scientific evidence leads us, it leads us towards intelligent design Teacher Mark Gihring "The new strategy is to teach intelligent design without calling it intelligent design," biologist Kenneth Miller, of Brown University in Rhode Island, told the BBC News website.

Dr Miller, an expert witness in the Dover School case, added: "The advocates of intelligent design and creationism have tried to repackage their criticisms, saying they want to teach the evidence for evolution and the evidence against evolution."

However, Mark Gihring, a teacher from Missouri sympathetic to intelligent design, told the BBC: "I think if we look at where the empirical scientific evidence leads us, it leads us towards intelligent design.

"[Intelligent design] ultimately takes us back to why we're here and the value of life... if an individual doesn't have a reason for being, they might carry themselves in a way that is ultimately destructive for society."

Economic risk

The decentralised US education system ensures that intelligent design will remain an issue in the classroom regardless of the decision in the Dover case.

"I think as a legal strategy, intelligent design is dead. That does not mean intelligent design as a social movement is dead," said Ms Scott.

"This is an idea that has real legs and it's going to be around for a long time. It will, however, evolve."

Among the most high-profile champions of intelligent design is US President George W Bush, who has said schools should make students aware of the concept.

But Mr Omenn warned that teaching intelligent design will deprive students of a proper education, ultimately harming the US economy.

"At a time when fewer US students are heading into science, baby boomer scientists are retiring in growing numbers and international students are returning home to work, America can ill afford the time and tax-payer dollars debating the facts of evolution," he said. Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/sci/tech/4731360.stm

"I find it interesting that creationists are not willing to accept abiogenesis (which would follow known physical laws)"

Abiogenesis is a pipe dream that follows nothing but imagination.

"but are willing to not only accept, but base their living philosophy on, magic"

An opinion based in ignorance. Biblical assertions have the strong proof behind them of fulfilled prophecy, and the statistical science that is documented in "The Bible Code Bombshell." The fact that you are too pig-headed to even read that powerful scientific evidence limits the value of your opinion severely.

702
posted on 02/20/2006 6:35:42 PM PST
by editor-surveyor
(Atheist and Fool are synonyms; Evolution is where fools hide from the sunrise)

I believe that at least your higher order of animals that live in packs have a rudimentary law, or morality, of their own -- basically there are rules you live by in the pack, and if you break them, exile city, dude.

Of course, that's just my WAG.

712
posted on 02/20/2006 6:53:31 PM PST
by stands2reason
(It's now 2006, and two wrongs still don't make a right.)

Not all Bible readers are know-nothing bohunks who don't accept evolution. If you noticed, the post to which I responded recommended ignoring text books for what was in the Bible. I'm sure a great many Christians on this forum would consider it the height of stupidity to ignore scientific teaching and replace it with exerpts from the Bible.

I don't mock God. I mock folks who think they speak for Him. God's a big boy and can take care of Himself. It's quite evident from your post that you are confusing yourself with Him, which, if I remember correctly, is blasphemy -- which is the one unforgiveable sin.

It is all about information. Mutation is the changing of information in the DNA. The structure of an organism is totally dependent upon information. Genetics is all about information. The first mutation was a change in information. Where did the original information come from? Matter is totally incapable of generating information.

God didn't kill His Son. Our sins did. Truly, the greatest gift of all. And what did that accomplish for you? Are you grateful? Or are you acting self-righteous and putting parameters around our Heavenly Father - so YOU CAN UNDERSTAND THINGS?

"...I do not understand why such an enlightened nation is embroiled in a senseless science vs. religion turmoil..." >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> That is why you are there baffled and bamboozled and we are here.

Get over it. Darwin sucks. He had bad teeth too. Evolution is nothing more than delusion and illusion...a social science theory nothing more.

"It is interesting to me that evolutionists refuse to deal with the origin of information - and how new information required for the blueprints of life comes into existence. Even Richard Dawkins has absolutely no answer to these questions!

What information are you talking about? How do you identify it? How do you measure it? How does it affect the phenotype? Does having more information make for a longer genome? More genes? More pseudo genes? More chromosomes? More complex reactions between homeobox genes?

More genes, chromosomes, pseudo-genes and even repeated features ((such as body segments) from over triggered and confused HOX genes) all result from replication errors. Is this the information increase you are looking for? Or is the information you are looking for more esoteric, something nobody has been able to describe or adequately measure yet?

If you want to see how information can start out real small and increase in size rapidly play the simple computer game of 'life'.

Many evolutionary proponents have dealt with the 'information' canard. Go to talkorigins.org or talkreason.org.

Those with the guns do make the rules. That's why the Founders put the Second Amendment in the Constitution.

The evidence of a superior intelligence contributing to the lives of His creatures is trumping the Naturalistic Only dogma!

OTOH, the Dover school board members who pushed for ID in science class were all swept from office by candidates opposed to ID in science class. Dover is in York County PA, which voted almost 2 to 1 for Bush over Kerry:

Dover is in York County, which supported George W. Bush in the last two presidential elections. According to unofficial vote totals for 2004, Bush received 114,621 votes and John Kerry received 63,628 votes. [my note: that's about 64% for Bush]

OF MICE AND MEN Striking similarities at the DNA level could aid research - Sabin Russell, Chronicle Medical Writer Thursday, December 5, 2002

Matching newly minted genetic blueprints of mice and men, scientists have found a wealth of common chemistry between human beings and our tiny, four-legged ancestors.

In a series of publications today in the British scientific journal Nature, international teams of researchers published a nearly complete sequence of the genetic instructions of "Black 6," the most common breed of laboratory mouse, and matched its traits with the recently decoded human genome.

The genetic code of the mouse, published on a public Web site (www.ensembl.org), is expected to speed the work of laboratory scientists studying human diseases around the globe.

Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, called the feat "a tremendously exciting and defining moment for biomedical research."

Among the findings are that mice and human beings both carry about 30,000 genes. Differences within these individual genes -- the precise sequences of the four-letter DNA code -- spell out the obvious differences between the two mammalian species. On a letter-by-letter basis, the genes are 85 percent the same.

Comparing the two genomes provides an evolutionary history of the two species, traced out in the diverging sequences of DNA. Mice, compared with humans, are more richly endowed in genes for sex, sense of smell, and immunity against pathogens.

TAIL LOST IN TIME Human beings, in turn, carry the genes for growing a tail but apparently lack the ancient instructions -- lost in 75 million years of evolution -- for completing the process.

"Comparing genomic information across species allows us to glean important information about ourselves," said Eric Lander, director of the Whitehead/MIT Center for Genome Research and lead author of the 42-page report on the mouse genome.

By comparing the two genomes, researchers were able to discover 1,200 new human genes as well as 9,000 mouse genes never before identified.

Researchers found that 90 percent of genes linked to diseases were the same in mice as in human beings. The mouse has been the mainstay of laboratory research on human illness and will most likely become a more essential player in future studies.

About 25 million mice are used in laboratories around the world to test new drugs and new notions about the biochemical machinery of living organisms.

David Haussler, director of biomolecular science and engineering at UC Santa Cruz, worked on the species-to-species genome comparisons and is a co- author of the report. "This is very, very significant," he said. "You can learn so much more by comparing genes that evolved from a common ancestor than by studying one gene alone."

SURVIVING GENETIC MATERIAL Raymond White, a human genetics researcher at UCSF's Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center in Emeryville, said the points of similarity between mouse and human genomes were vitally important -- they represent bits of genetic material that have survived, intact, over 75 million years of evolution. It's nature's way of saying something is working.

The research that has pinpointed these biologically "conserved" regions on the two genomes allows researchers to focus on the important parts of the human genome, and to ignore the much larger amounts of genetic information that is essentially meaningless -- some biologists call it "junk" DNA.

Mouse-to-human genome comparisons have shown that, in addition to common genes, the two species share a surprising amount of DNA code that controls when and how these genes turn on or off. These "regulatory regions," which might have been dismissed as "junk," take up more space on the genome than the genes themselves and promise to become a fertile area for research.

The catalog of mouse and human genes yielded by these genome projects will cut years of time from otherwise painstaking laboratory research. When a particularly interesting spot on a chromosome captures a researcher's attention, said White, it can take "three or four years, and three or four post-docs (PhD researchers), to find the specific gene." Now, with the gene catalog in hand, it can take five minutes of computer time.

The publication capped a two-year effort of the Mouse Sequencing Consortium,

a group of hundreds of scientists from 27 institutions in six nations. Funders of the $130 million effort include the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Energy in the United States, and the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council in England.

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